Privacy Policy

Melot Accounting Limited - Privacy Policy

 

 

At Melot Accounting Ltd we respect the privacy of visitors to our website (melotaccounting.com) and our clients. This policy is concerned with how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have over your personal information.

 

Your Privacy

 

We take our duty to process your personal information very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information.

 

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.

 

Refer to the sections below for more details on how and why we use your personal information:

 

  1.  Who are we?

  2. What personal information we collect and how we use it

  3. Legitimate interests

  4. Sharing your information

  5. Retaining your information

  6. Your details on the web

  7. What are your rights?

  8. How to contact us 

 

 

1. Who are we?

 

In this policy references to The Company, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to Melot Accounting Ltd which is a registered company in England and Wales. Registered Number 07663360.

 

2. What personal information we collect and how we use it

 

What we need

 

Melot Accounting Ltd is what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal information about you like your name, postal address, telephone number and email address.

 

Often we will need to collect other information about you such as your date of birth, gender and other details in order to assist with your accountancy and tax affairs. We will be very clear with you that we wish to collect such information, our reason for collecting such information, and we would only do so with your consent.

 

Why we need it

 

We collect your personal information in connection with the specific purposes to provide you with accountancy and tax services.

 

The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service. You don't have to disclose any of this information to browse our site. However, if you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

 

Our marketing

 

Sometimes, with your consent, we will process your personal information to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.

 

On other occasions, we may process personal information when we need to do this to fulfil a contract or where we are required to do this by law or other regulations.

 

Melot Accounting Ltd also processes your information when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our services, newsletter requests, feedback, and other activities. Please see the section on 'Legitimate Interest' for more information.

 

How we obtain your details

 

We collect your personal information in a number of ways:

  • When you provide it to us directly.
  • When you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us (such as a previous accountant or by providing us Agent access to your HMRC data).
  • When you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us.
  • From publicly available sources (where possible) to keep your information up to date (e.g. Companies House website).

 

We combine the information from these sources with the information you provide to us directly.

 

Children

 

We do not knowingly market to or accept business for accountancy and tax services from persons aged under 18 years.

 

Where is your data stored?

 

The personal information we process is processed within the European Economic Area (EEA), specifically in the UK.

Whilst we endeavour to use systems and software based in the EEA, we do also use some third party software which is situated outside of the EEA.

 

For example, we use Dropbox (for document storage/sharing), Support Bee and Mailchimp (for emails), and Capsule CRM and Slack (for internal management and communication).

 

Where it is necessary for us to use such services we will ensure that the third party suppliers comply with the GDPR and any other applicable data protection laws.

 

3. Legitimate interests

 

We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use your personal information. One of these is something called 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking Legitimate Interests means we can process your personal information if:

 

We have a genuine and legitimate reason.

 

and

 

We are not harming any of your rights and interests.

 

Typical examples of when we might use the approach are for preventing fraud or maintaining the security of our systems.

 

How we may use your personal information

 

Your best interest: Processing your information to protect you against fraud when transacting on our website, and to ensure our websites and systems are secure.

 

Personalisation: Where the use of the information enables us to personalise, enhance or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our clients.

 

Analytics: To use your personal information for the purposes of customer analysis, assessment, and direct marketing, on a personalised or aggregated basis, to help us with our activities and to provide you with the most relevant information as long as this does not harm any of your rights and interests.

 

Research: To determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising and to develop our products, services, systems and relationships with you.

 

Due Diligence: We need to undertake due diligence on potential customers and business partners to determine if those companies and individuals have been involved or convicted of offences such as fraud, bribery and corruption. And to verify the identity of individuals.

 

We will also hold information about you so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

 

Your interests

 

Before we use your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will always consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection legislation and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will never use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

 

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal details at any time by contacting us.

 

 

4. Sharing your information

 

We do not share your information with any other organisations or individuals unless we are obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations and in the following instances:

 

  • If you have agreed that we may do so.
  • When it is a necessary part of the services you have contracted us to assist with – for instance to facilitate filing with Companies House or HMRC, or assisting with set up of an online account (such as FreeAgent or FloatApp).
  • When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. sending emails.
  • As part of our internal management systems and processes, e.g. use of CRM Software (currently Capsule CRM).
  • If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity.
  • We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, supporters, customers and sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won’t include any personally identifying information.
  • And, we will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

 

 

5. Retaining your information

 

We hold your information only as long as necessary for each reason that we use it. We have provided some examples of the time we will keep your information in this paragraph but you can contact us for more information.

 

If you have contacted us for an enquiry we will retain your name and contact details for up to 2 years before removing them from our system in case you decide to engage our services. If you wish to be forgotten sooner please contact us and we will ensure you are removed immediately.

 

If you have been a tax or accountancy client and dis-engage services from Melot Accounting Ltd or request that we have no further contact with you, we will continue to retain information pertaining to our correspondence and your tax and accounting affairs for up to 10 years.

 

After the retention period has passed we will ensure all information is securely destroyed.

 

6. What are your rights?

 

You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:

  • Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
  • The ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
  • Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
  • Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
  • Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').
  • Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
  • Obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes (right to data portability).
  • Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

 

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law, you can find out more at the Information Commissioners Office website.

 

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to processing your personal information at any time by contacting us.

 

 

7. How to contact us

 

If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us (details at the bottom of this page), we will be happy to help.

 

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal information, you can contact our data protection champion who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal information in accordance with the law you can complain the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

 

If you wish to talk to us about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you, our data protection champion can be contacted as follows:

 

Data Protection champion – Myriam Melot

Email: myriam@melotaccounting.com

Telephone: 07770 762728

 

This document was last updated: January 2023